Posts Tagged ‘policing’

On Friday, we were all thrilled by the opening ceremony, well all thrilled except one Member of Parliament who attends parties where the dress code is Nazi uniform. We saw suffragettes, we celebrated the NHS, we saw winged cyclists.

Meanwhile outside it was business as usual. A Critical Mass cycle ride seen by some as protest at the Zil Lanes but in reality simply to exercise the right to cycle on the public highway was brutally attacked by the police. The police reaction was totally over the top. The police could have simply let the cyclists pass through, point made, and that would have been the end of the matter but that sadly is not the way the mentality of the Met works.

Something like 200 cyclists were arrested. They were held on a bus all night without food or drink whilst they waited to be processed.

Mass arrests for the heinous crime of “cycling in a group north of the river Thames” on the opening night of an Olympics, which is supposed to be promoting access to sport and active travel, sends a clear message about how committed Games organisers Locog are to any legacy other than a financial one.

A diverse group of people attempting to celebrate their right to use the road safely and in an environmentally friendly manner , which they have been doing for several years and even won the right to do so in the House of Lords, should be promoted by the Olympics, rather than persecuted for fear of their creating a four or five minute delay on the precious Zil Lanes. As Critical Mass is a long-running sporting tradition in London and many other cities across the world, Locog should have made sure they accommodated it — the Olympics are disrupting normal life in the city enough already without infringing the rights of the participants in one of few sporting events which no one is able to make a profit from.

On Friday 27th July, 182 cyclists were held in a police kettle for two hours, handcuffed in buses for three hours, and held in a police cell from six hours to two days. These included a 13 year old boy. Police also confirmed the cyclists reports that CS gas was used during these arrests.

Out of 182 cyclists, only 3 have been charged with any offence. However, ALL have bail conditions imposed on them until September 18th 2012 restricting their freedom to move, assemble, associate and live their lives.

We have the following demands:

All bail conditions should be discharged

All data including DNA, fingerprint, addresses etc taken from those cyclists should be removed from all paper and comupter records of police & other agencies

An independent review of the thuggish police behaviour on Friday 27th July should be conducted as a matter of urgency

All this for continuing the 18 year tradition of a bike ride through the streets of London on the last Friday of every month.

Some of those arrested were nothing to do with the Critical Mass cycle ride. They simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on a bike (which in the eyes of the Met is a heinous crime requiring cuffing and detention).

This political policing to crush dissent and restrict people’s rights without charge must be stoppped. Help us stand for a police and legal system which we can believe in, please sign our petition today:

I do not expect to arrive off a train in Brighton to find myself detained on the street in a police kettle! But that is what happened today.

I got off the train from Victoria a little after midday. Something was up. Police everywhere.

Before I knew it, I was held in a police kettle.

We can not let you leave, you are part of an assembly. No I am not, I said, I am walking down the road, or at least I was until I was held against my will on the street.

The officer pointed to the pink slip in my hand which I had been handed moments before as justification for my being detained. The pink slip informed me off my legal rights. Thus having a pink slip informing me of my legal rights if held on the street is justification for holding me on the street! If this is not political policing I do not know what is.

To be fair to the police, they were not heavy handed or aggressive, and they did have a problem of keeping apart two opposing demonstrations, and they did say once the other lot moved off, I could leave.

I was asked if I was press. Had I said yes, maybe I would have been allowed to leave, but I was honest and said no.

It was then announced everyone was being escorted to Victoria Gardens. Not having any wish to be escorted to Victoria Gardens, not even knowing where it was, I again tried to leave. This time I was stopped by a young inexperienced officer who did not appear to have two brain cells to rub together. He refused to let me leave on the grounds I should have left earlier!

I would have raised the matter with whoever was the senior officer in charge, but I spied a gap in the police lines, and so quickly exited.

I then walked to nearby Grocer and Grain. Outside in the side street, six police vans, including one parked on the corner on the double yellow lines.

I left Grocer and Grain about an hour later to continue on down to the sea front only this time I encountered the opposing demo, a bunch of moronic chanting thugs, otherwise known as the English Defence League.

Repugnant as they may be, English Defence League has the right to protest, to march. It does not though mean we have to listen. Let them march, let everyone see what an obnoxious bunch of clowns they are.

The counter-demo was naive to the point of stupidity. It was to inflate the importance of the EDL to a degree they neither deserve nor merit.

I thought kettles were now illegal and could only be used in extreme circumstances. This clearly has not yet filtered down to the Boys in Blue in Brighton.

Women are not able to make an informed decision about who they are having a relationship with if they are being duped by police officers. It’s time for the abuse of women by undercover police officers to stop. — Sophie Stephen

Cops arriving for work at New Scotland Yard this morning found the main entrance blocked and instead had to queue around the block and go in through an unsecured side entrance.

The women were there to protest at the infiltration of activist groups by undercover police and what appears to be state sanctioned rape. They felt they had been violated by the state.

Sex in the absence of informed consent, is rape.

What in a democratic society are police doing infiltrating peaceful activist groups at a cost to the taxpayer running into millions of pounds? What are the police doing using sex as a means to blend in and for their own gratification?

The behaviour of the police in their use of female activists is little different than the use by the Japanese during WWII of Comfort Women.

Tuesday the acting Met commissioner Tim Godwin and Commander Bob Broadhurst who is responsible for public order in London will have to appear before the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to explain why they lied about undercover policing at the G20 protests in London in 2009.

Go on any protest or demonstration and you will be filmed by the police. Those wielding the cameras are FIT (Forward Intelligence Unit). FIT Watch do their best to highlight what FIT are doing.

But they probably already know who you are, what you are doing, where you live, how you think.

Go to any meeting meeting and you will always find at least one individual who does his or her best to disrupt, create negative vibes. People will leave as a result of their behaviour. Then there are others who are gung ho, suggest all sorts of ridiculous actions, which too many people get carried away with, but a moment’s calm reflection shows to be nonsense.

I used to to think these were simply nutters, dysfunctional people lacking in any common sense or social skills. Well now we know they are just as likely to be undercover police officers who are infiltrating, informing on and disrupting green and other activists.

According to Mark Kennedy aka Mark Stone, who spent seven years undercover infiltrating the climate change movement, there are at least 15 police infiltrators.

Mark Kennedy aka Mark Stone was exposed on Indymedia UK last autumn. He became known to the mainstream media who have since gone on a feeding frenzy when the Ratcliffe-on-Soar conspiracy trial collapsed through lack of evidence. We now know that Mark Kennedy had made secret recordings which showed those charged were innocent.

Since then three more have been exposed bringing the list of known police infiltrators to four – Lynn Watson, Mark Jacobs, Jim Boyling.

Lynn Watson posed as an environmental activist for five years, claiming to be a care worker living in Bournemouth.

Mark Jacobs, not thought to be his real name, infiltrated anarchist groups and had an affair with at least one woman. He did a huge amount of damage within Cardiff Anarchist Network where he was known as Marco. He claimed to be a landscape gardener and long-distance lorry driver.

Jim Boyling aka Jim Sutton married an activist and had two children while working undercover with environmental group Reclaim the Streets! He even persuaded his ex-wife to change her name by deed poll so as not to raise the suspicions of senior officers. It is reported he has been suspended.

Sex was used as a means of obtaining information. Mark Kennedy aka Mark Stone in his interview with the Mail On Sunday last weekend claimed female activists used sex to interest men in the movement. This is something I have never observed or encountered.

A former undercover officer has said infiltrators were required to have sex with activists as part of the job! It helped them to blend in.

Post a report or make a comment on Indymedia UK and your IP address is held in a temporary cache, then lost. This is to protect the ID of those who are posting, in the same way Wikileaks protects its sources. If you are leaking highly sensitive material, you would be advised to go somewhere anonymous where you are not known such as a library or net cafe and use a guest account .

Indymedia UK became suspicious of some posts and comments and so they installed a filter to examine where these were coming from. The postings were found to come from government servers on a secure network!

Police postings came to light following an internal investigation on persistent disinformation being published to Indymedia UK. Technically Indymedia is supposed to safeguard it’s posters by not logging IP addresses. In actual fact there are IP filters. Although IP addresses are only stored temporarily, those of persistent abusers are kept in order to prevent the site from being overwhelmed. Moderators of Indymedia UK identified the Gateway-303 server as being the source of numerous such posts. A filter was set up to capture the behaviour of the individual(s) who were hiding behind the server.

One IP address so identified was 62.25.109.196 , which correlates with the server gateway303.energis.gsi.gov.uk. There are similar servers, gateway-301 & gateway-302 with IP addresses 62.25.109.194 and 62.25.109.195 respectively. Other servers identified are gateway-101, gateway-202, gateway-201, etc

GSI stands for Government Secure Intranet. It is a network established by the UK Government to allow secure transfer of files across its computers. The Police National Network is separate from it, but can connect to it. Currently GSI is operated by Energis, a UK based internet company now owned by Cable & Wireless.

It is clear from the consistency of the usage of gateway-303 server that the IPs are probably assigned to particular premises or else specific units within the UK Government. One of the purposes of the GSI network is to provide a secure proxy network behind which users can maintain their anonymity. Hence the lack of solid information as to exactly who is behind the postings. However, SchNEWS is gonna take a stab in the dark (if only) as to who they are; in fact some actually signed NETCU. Of course it could be the old double bluff, but given the level of intelligence behind some of the postings even this level of sophistication seems unlikely.

The messages posted were smears and misinformation, incitement to break the law, incitement to break up peaceful protests.

“No – stuff that – SHUT the place: Let’s not all stand around like lemmings – lets shut the place!Bring ladders and wire cutters. If there are enough of us we can shut it!”

Postings even included personal phone numbers of targets for animal rights activists.

I personally have had direct experience of this when smears and falsehoods were posted on Indymedia UK to discredit certain individuals. What was posted was not true. How did I know? I was with the individuals at the time, thus I knew it was not true. I at the time said that what was being posted was not true, raising a big question mark against those were making these smears and more important what was their motive? They used to be regulars at the Anarchist Book fair in London running a stall.

What is all very odd these operations are run by Acpo, the Association of Chief Police Officers. Odder still is that it is a limited company.

Even PR companies are jumping on the bandwagon, but it is going to take a little more than a few splashes of greenwash to give their clients a clean image.

A couple of years ago CAAT was infiltrated by Martin Hogbin, a guy working for BAE-Systems. He was a nice guy, everyone not only liked him, they trusted him. He made himself indispensable and was soon running everything. I had direct experience of what he was up to. I let him know of something going down. Next thing I knew, there was BAE-Systems heavies everywhere.

Over a decade ago London Greenpeace had more infiltrators than real activists!

This all sounds like something out of Stalinist Russia, KGB infiltration of dissidents. But no, this is England and Wales over the last decade.

Practises that cannot and should not be tolerated in a free and democratic society. If nothing else it puts Wikileaks in context.

I called for an independent Judicial Inquiry last week. Police State infiltration of activists has no place in a democratic society. The police should uphold the right to protest. It also undermines public confidence in the police. The police should be dealing with crime, not protesters who may at times carry out mild acts of civil disobedience, which has a long and honourable tradition of forcing peaceful democratic change. Infiltration should be of criminal gangs and drug dealers, terrorists, people traffickers, not activists.

Tuesday the acting Met commissioner Tim Godwin and Commander Bob Broadhurst who is responsible for public order in London will have to appear before the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to explain why they lied about undercover policing at the G20 protests in London in 2009.